THINKING – Sprint 23
How high-risk entrepreneurs fund their startups
The reason for this sprint
While most entrepreneurs are bedrock, many start by dreaming of being an entrepreneur that founds a company that quickly becomes worth a lot of money, perhaps even more than a billion dollars.
This sprint describes the realities and the challenges faced by high-risk entrepreneurs in finding investors for their startups.
We describe the keys to getting funding from angels, being accepted by an accelerator with a good track record and ultimately getting series A funding from a VC. We also go over the numbers of how few entrepreneurs succeed in getting to series A.
Sprint exercises
We first ask you to read or listen to “How high-risk entrepreneurs fund their startups.”
For the exercise, please estimate:
How many months will it take for you to hit $50 million in revenues?
How much investment will it take you get to a $50 million revenue run rate as fast as possible?
What strong evidence of big demand do you expect to be able to show angel and VC investors to get them interested?
Who will be on your team and how will your team inspire confidence in angels, accelerators and/or VCs that you can hit your goals?